


Your Tears Will Fall to Make Love Grow

by mrsvc



Category: My Babysitter's A Vampire
Genre: Absent Parents, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsvc/pseuds/mrsvc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Benny is taken to his parents' grave, he's five years old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Tears Will Fall to Make Love Grow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Menacherie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menacherie/gifts).



> Unbeta'd. Helpful comments and suggestions are welcome.
> 
> For some reason, I decided that Benny's parents were dead. I have no idea why, and I've never seen any explanation as to where they are. If there are indeed alive and explained in canon, consider this an AU.

The first time Benny is taken to his parents' grave, he's five years old. His grandmother puts him in a button up shirt and promises him he can play with Ethan when they get home but this is important. She smiles but Benny knows it's not a good smile. It's the sad smile adults get when something is wrong. He knows this because he's seen it a lot since his parents died.

It's fall and the leaves are red and gold on their branches. His grandma is carrying a bunch of red roses and his nose is cold and he doesn't like this. He whines, "Grandma, I wanna go home." She shushes him and he hears how her voice isn't right. She stops walking and points with her free hand straight ahead at a big grey stone. He can't read but he can see his last name written on it and it scares him. He may be only five but he could tell something here wasn't right.

"What is it?"

"It's your parents' gravestone."

Benny shakes his head stubbornly. Parents aren't supposed to be in the ground, with a stone over them. They are supposed to be here with him, on the grass, raking the leaves into piles for him and Ethan to jump in just like Mr. Morgan did.

"No!" he yells, running to hide behind a big oak tree. "You won't make me."

"Benny, please."

"No! I just wanna go home," he cries pitifully. He hears her sigh, defeat evident in her sagging frame, and peeks around the tree to see her putting the flowers in a little stone vase next to the scary stone.

When she comes back, she holds out her hand and says, "come on, love."

"You won't make me come back. Not never." He rubs his nose and feels it burn in the cold air.

She nods. Benny doesn't come back for nearly six years.

When he's eleven, he looks up at his grandmother as she prepared herself to go on her visit and says, "You never take flowers anymore."

She looks up, startled, and replies, "I didn't think you'd noticed." His grandma is always more subdued on the anniversary of their death and he hears it when her words lack their usual bite.

"Why?"

"I don't need to." She pulls her gloves on solemnly. "Someone else already does."

Benny stands up, pulls his own coat on, and gets into the car beside her without a word. His grandmother doesn't question him either. When they get there, there is already a dozen yellow roses in the vase.

"Do you know who it is?" he asks.

His grandmother shakes her head. "A friend."

Benny shoves his hands deeper into his coat pockets and looks up at the trees.

He doesn't visit them often, not like his grandmother does. He supposes it's because she lost a lot more than he feels like he did. She lost a lifetime of memories and a daughter. He may have lost his parents but he can barely remember them. He sometimes counts that among his blessings. Other times, when he watches Mrs. Morgan push Ethan's hair back and press a kiss to his forehead, he thinks it's the most unfair thing in the whole world.

On his mother's birthday, the year he turns 14, his grandmother comes home with a pink rose in her hand. Benny had refused to go that morning, still limiting himself to just once a year, and asks, "did someone give you something?"

"No," she says with a smile. "It appears our friend has struck again. I brought one home with me."

Benny nods, goes back to his video games with a tight grip on his controller and a pain in his heart.

Benny gets up early on the anniversary of their death when he is fifteen years old. He walks the twenty blocks to the graveyard by himself, feeling useless and stupid, but he has to do this by himself. He thinks about veering off into town to buy flowers but he's too curious to see if their mysterious friend will be there.

Benny is old enough now, and aware enough of his magic, to know that all the pretty colors of fall mean that the leaves are dying. He snorts, his breath coming out in a fog, and scowls. Figures, he thinks. He's really cold by the time he reaches the gravesite, his nose raw and his fingers numb. He sees someone sitting on the cold, hard ground beside his mother, and he ducks behind the old oak before he could get a proper look. He doesn't need one when he realizes that their mysterious friend is someone he knows very well.

"I think you'd be really proud of him," Ethan says, rubbing the petal of one of the golden roses between his fingers. "He's doing really good in art this year and Grandma says that his magic is coming in really strong." He laughs. "She told me he had all of your talent but none of your discipline but I won't believe her. He's plenty dedicated to the things he loves."

Benny walks around and deliberately lets the leaves crunch under his feet. Ethan whips around, looks a little like a deer caught in the headlights, and quickly stands up, brushing the bits of leaves from his jeans nervously.

"Why?" Benny says. He isn't mad, just confused.

Ethan takes a deep breath. "Do you remember when we were kids? And I asked you what happened to your parents? You wouldn't tell me. So I asked your grandma."

Benny takes a step forward, their breath just one cloud rising in the sky, and asks, "So you bring my mother roses? Every year. Today, and on her birthday."

"Your grandma told me that she didn't think you were ready yet. And I didn't want her to think you'd forgotten her." Ethan shrugs. "It made a lot more sense when I was ten."

Benny raises his hand, lays it gently on Ethan's cheek, and smiles. "Thank you," he says, letting his voice crack. Ethan smiles, takes Benny's hand in his own and drags him over to the grave. He takes one yellow rose in his hand and sticks it upright in the ground right behind their gravestone. Benny drops to his knees, pulls the energy left in those dying leaves, leaving them to crumble to dust, and uses it to make the single rose blossom and grow into a whole bush, bright and fragrant in the weak fall sunlight.

They only gets so far as the oak tree that Benny had hidden behind, more than once, before Benny stops them with a hand to Ethan's arm, and kisses him right there, as more leaves fall around them. Ethan leans into it, one hand clutched in Benny's hoodie. They break apart, foreheads resting against each other, and Ethan pants, "let's go home. We'll come back next year."

Benny nods, links their fingers together, and thinks maybe he can do it, as long as Ethan is there with him.


End file.
